Toby's Room (3 page)

Every window gaped wide, as if the house were gasping for breath. Barely visible above the trees, a small, hard, white sun threatened the heat to come. Mother’s precious lawn had turned yellow, with bald patches here and there where the cracked earth showed through.

Elinor chased clumps of pale yellow scrambled egg around her plate. It was absolutely necessary that she should appear to eat, but so far she hadn’t managed to force one mouthful down.

‘Water?’ Mother asked. She topped up her own and Elinor’s glass without waiting for a reply.

‘Look at Hobbes,’ Elinor said.

Hearing his name, Hobbes raised his head, fixed his bloodshot eyes on her for a moment, then sank his slobbering jowls on to his paws again.

Her mother’s face softened, as it never did when she looked at Elinor. ‘Poor old thing, he really hates this weather.’

‘Yes, imagine this in a fur coat.’

They ate in silence for a while.

‘You were very quiet last night,’ Mother said.

‘Headache, I expect. Where is everybody?’

‘Rachel’s having a lie-in. Your father’s in his study, been up since six, and Tim and Toby have gone shooting.’

‘Toby hates shooting.’

Her mother’s jaw clicked as she chewed on a triangle of dry toast. ‘Well, that’s where they’ve gone.’

Conversation wilted in the heat. Soon there was no sound except for a discreet, well-bred scraping of knives on plates. Elinor could feel her mother’s gaze heavy on the side of her face. She put her fork down.

‘Shall we have coffee outside?’ her mother said.

They took their cups on to the terrace where a table and chairs had been set up overlooking the lawn. The smell of dry grass tightened Elinor’s chest; she was finding it difficult to breathe.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. Looks like we’re in for another scorcher.’

Her mother tested the cushion for dampness before sitting down. ‘It needs a thunderstorm, freshen things up.’

As she spoke, the crack of a rifle sent wood pigeons blundering into the air. Elinor drew a deep breath, or as deep as she could manage, and gazed straight ahead.

‘You and Toby haven’t quarrelled, have you?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘I thought I detected a bit of an atmosphere last night.’

‘No, I was just tired.’

Mother sipped her coffee, put the cup down, dabbed her lips on the napkin. ‘I want to tell you something, Elinor.’

This might have sounded like the beginning of a mother–daughter chat, except that she and her mother never had them. That was Rachel’s province. The bare minimum of information that had been imparted to Elinor when she reached the age of thirteen had been conveyed by Rachel, in this, as in all other things, their mother’s deputy.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever told you Toby was a twin?’

This was the last thing she’d expected. ‘No, I had no idea. Well …’ She tried to gather her thoughts. ‘What happened?’

‘It died. She. It was a girl.’

She swallowed, obviously finding it difficult to go on. She was a reticent woman – or vacant – Elinor had never been sure which, though she was inclined to favour vacancy. ‘Bland’ was the word. It was almost as if her mother’s beauty, which even now was remarkable, had taken the place of a personality.

‘I never felt really well when I was expecting him, and with Rachel I had – in fact, I felt wonderful; but with Toby, no. I was so breathless by the end I used to sleep sitting up. And then when I went into labour it was … Well, it was difficult. A whole day and half the following night.’

Elinor winced. ‘I couldn’t do it.’

‘When you’re nine months pregnant, dear, you don’t have a lot of choice. Anyway, he was born,
at last
, and of course I felt relief and joy and all the things you do feel, and it actually took me quite a while to realize the midwife was looking worried. She called the doctor – he was downstairs having a drink with your father – and I’ll never forget him coming through the door.’ She cupped a hand over her right eye. ‘His eyes just bulged. And then there was a great flurry and panic and … this
thing
came out.’

She was folding her napkin, carefully running her fingers along the creases. ‘It had died quite late in the pregnancy, six, seven months, something like that. Normally, if a baby dies, labour starts straight away, but for some reason it hadn’t. And so Toby went on growing and, as he grew, he’d flattened it against the side of the womb. They didn’t want me to see it, but I said, “No, I’ve got to.” I said if they didn’t let me see it, I’d only imagine far worse things …’ She glanced at Elinor, then quickly away. ‘I don’t know what the worse things would’ve been. It had turned into a kind of scroll. You know the parchment things the Romans used to write on? A bit like that, but with features, everything. You could tell it was a girl.’

What to say? ‘That’s awful, I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s called a papyrus twin, when that happens. Apparently, it’s very rare. The doctor and your father got quite excited.’

‘I’m sure Father didn’t.’

Her mother smiled.

‘Does Toby know?’

‘I’ve never told him. Your father might have mentioned it, I don’t know.’

Another burst of gunfire from the wood. Rooks, crows and pigeons were circling over the treetops now, the air full of their cries.

‘When he was little, Toby, he had this imaginary friend. I suppose a lot of children do, but this one was very real; I mean, we had to set a place for her at the table, and everything. I wasn’t worried, I thought it would all disappear as soon as he started playing with
other children and made some real friends. But it didn’t. I used to lie awake at night sometimes and listen to him talking to her. I think I almost started to believe in her myself.’

‘Did she have a name?’

‘D’you know, I can’t remember.’

‘So what happened? Well, she’s not still here, is she?’

Another, slightly acid, smile.

‘You. You happened. As soon as you could walk, you followed Toby round like a little dog. I used to think he’d get tired of it, but he never did. And the girl vanished. He didn’t need her any more, you see. He had you.’

Elinor was trying to read her mother’s expression. Jealousy? Yes. Resentment of their closeness, hers and Toby’s? Yes. But something else too. It occurred to her, for the first time, that perhaps Toby had formed so effective a barrier between herself and the rest of the family, that her mother might actually feel some grief for the loss of
her
.

No, no. She was being over-analytical, or just plain stupid. Her mother wouldn’t feel anything for the loss of her, except, quite possibly, relief.

And yet, if things had been different, she might have taken the place of the lost girl. In many families, that’s exactly what would have happened, but not in this one.

She said, stiffly: ‘Thank you for telling me.’

‘I thought it might help … You’re getting to know a lot of new people and that’s good, of course, but sometimes I think perhaps Toby’s a bit afraid of losing you. He hasn’t been happy recently, and I don’t know why.’

‘No, but then we don’t know very much about him, do we?’

She would have gone on, but her mother held up a hand. Toby and Tim were striding up the lawn.

Elinor felt as though she was watching them from a great height, almost as if she were one of the birds that their guns had startled into the air. Two young men in shooting jackets and cord breeches, squinting into the sun, while on the terrace a woman and a girl,
both in white dresses, rose to meet them. A jarring of two worlds, or so it seemed to her, looking down.

Suddenly, she was hurtling to the ground. Back in her body, she stared at the thing that dangled from Toby’s hand: a gleam of white bone in a mess of blood-spiked fur, eyes filmed over. The silence gathered.

‘It’s a hare,’ she said.

‘Ye-es?’

‘It’s bad luck to kill a hare.’

‘Won’t stop you eating it, though, will it?’ Tim said, with an attempt at jocularity. He was no fool, he sensed the atmosphere; he just didn’t know what to do about it.

‘I thought it was a rabbit,’ Toby said.

She could see how he hated it, the limp, lifeless thing in his hand. Looking through his eyes, from his brain outwards, she saw the hare come over the hill, flowing like water through the long grasses. Oh, he’d have called the bullet back if he could, she didn’t doubt that, but it was too late. Flies were already laying their eggs inside the bloody hole.

‘Elinor –’

Refusing even to look at him, she turned and went back into the house.

Climbing the stairs to her lodgings, Elinor felt vulnerable; an animal leaving a trail of blood behind in the snow. Even with the door locked, the gas ring lit and the kettle boiling, she still didn’t feel safe.

She forced herself to butter a slice of stale bread, but her stomach rose at the sight of it. Although it was still early she went into the bedroom and undressed, wrapped a robe tightly round her and then sat down at the dressing table to brush her hair. The nightly ritual: she’d done this every night since she was four or five years old. The face in the mirror stared back at her with no sign of recognition.

Suddenly, she was rummaging through the top drawer searching for her scissors. As soon as she found them, she began hacking away at her hair. The blades weren’t sharp enough; they mouthed thick clumps of hair like a snake struggling to ingest a rat. Still, she persevered. Floating between her and the glass, she saw the flattened, scroll-like body of the little female thing Toby had killed. Oh, what nonsense, of course he hadn’t killed it; he hadn’t
killed
anybody. It had died, that was all, it had died, and he went on growing, as he was bound to do, taking up more and more room until there was no space left for her.

How quiet it was in these rooms. She’d not yet learned to live alone, though she’d been excited at the prospect, not nervous at all. She had close friends near by, Catherine and Ruthie, so she knew she wouldn’t be lonely. Now, she realized that silence has a sound; well, this kind of silence did anyway: toxic silence. Somewhere between a hum and a buzz. Only the crunching of the scissors through her hair interrupted it. When she’d finished cutting, she raised both hands to the nape of her neck, feeling the dangerous freedom of the shorn ends. Her hair lay in coils and question marks around her feet. She scooped it up and put it in the bin.

Lying between the sheets, she felt different; her body had turned into bread dough, dough that’s been kneaded and pounded till it’s grey, lumpen, no yeast in it, no lightness, no prospect of rising. Her arms lay stiff by her sides. When, finally, she drifted off to sleep, she dreamt she was on her knees in a corner of the room, trying to vomit without attracting the attention of the person who was asleep on the bed. Her eyes wide open in the darkness, she tried to cast off the dream, but it stayed with her till morning.

At seven, she forced herself out of bed, determined to go into the Slade at her usual time. Everything was normal, she was normal, she wasn’t even going to think about it. Though she’d need to keep her hat on in the studio; she didn’t normally, but she just couldn’t face the inevitable comments on her hair.

In the ground-floor cloakroom, she bumped into Catherine, who asked about her weekend. Fine, she said, a really nice break. Then, quickly, she asked about the dressmaking session. It was a hoot, Catherine said. She should have seen them, giggling and sticking pins into each other. They were doing it again, next Saturday. Would she be able to come?

‘Yes,’ Elinor said.

‘Really? But you always go home.’

‘Not this weekend.’

She let Catherine go on ahead, pretending she had to look for something in her bag. As soon as she was alone, she took off her hat and stared into the brown-spotted mirror behind the washbasins. Huge, frightened eyes looked back at her. The cropped hair revealed the shape of her head, which was remarkably like Toby’s. All that chopping and hacking and all she’d succeeded in doing was to make herself look even more like him.

Impatient with herself, she turned away. She had to face people; there was nothing to be gained by putting it off. At least in her baggy, ankle-length smock she hardly looked like a woman at all. And that was a comfort: any exposed skin felt dangerous. Resisting the temptation to tuck her hands into her sleeves, she walked along
the corridor to the life class. Even her hands looked different as she was signing the register: longer, thinner, with prominent tendons and raised veins. Her signature too, usually so sprawling and self-confident, seemed to have crumpled and folded in on itself, like a spider in the bath when the first swirl of hot water reaches it.

Professor Tonks had arrived early and was leaning against the wall at the far end of the room: a tall, formally dressed, thin, ascetic man with the face of a Roman emperor, or a fish eagle. Behind him, the wall was covered in palette-knife scrapings, the colours cancelling each other out, so that his black-suited figure was outlined in swirls of shimmering grey. Like birds’ feathers. It was actually rather a remarkable sight.

You wouldn’t need a plumb line to draw Tonks: his body was a plumb line. How tall would he be? Six five? Something like that. She remembered coming to the Slade for her admittance interview, how intimidated she’d been, by his height, by his manner; and his reception of her drawings had done nothing to make her feel less silly, less immature. Her schoolteachers had praised her work so highly; she’d won prizes, for heaven’s sake, and not piddling little local prizes either,
proper
prizes,
national
prizes. Tonks held those same drawings up to the light, and winced. It was like having a bucket of icy water thrown in your face. She’d come up gasping, shocked out of her complacency, and more alive than she’d ever felt.

Some of the other students had already started drawing. Reluctantly, she sat down and looked at the model. Slack breasts, belly wrinkled from decades of childbearing, and a greyish pallor to the skin, as if she’d kept herself going for years on doorsteps of bread and dripping and mugs of stewed tea. Not all the models looked like that; some of the younger ones were really beautiful. She’d overheard two male students laughing about Tonks and one particularly attractive model, insinuating that she was his mistress. Elinor hadn’t believed it, not for a second. But now, suddenly, she did.